Zombie Fallout 19, page 7
Earlier that day we had been spit-roasted over an open flame under the oppressive Nigerian sun; the lab itself had been close to balmy. I’m sure Jenny, in accounting, was all right with the temperature, but probably not a guy here that wanted to wear a suit while working in the environment. That all changed the moment we stepped inside the server room. Could have easily stored meat there. I shivered hard and shook it off; felt like I’d been submerged into a frozen river. You don’t produce much of a fat barrier on a steady diet of booze.
“Holy shit,” Reed said for the second time.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was expecting. I’d seen server rooms in the movies, enormous sterile environments with black monoliths, speaking their seditious code in colored blinking lights. This was all of that and a bag of chips.
“It’s fucking huge.” Kirby had stepped forward.
I looked to him then to Lydia; she seemed unconcerned with the swear.
Huge was an understatement; it looked like a server warehouse.
“Where do we even start?” BT asked. “Mike, there have to be hundreds, maybe a thousand drives in here.”
It was a valid question followed by an even more valid statement. The sheer number of drives made lugging them out of here impossible.
“Sure wish this was a destroy mission.” I placed a hand against a stack. “Lydia, any chance you know where the most important drives are located?”
She shrugged. Well, that was a long shot at best, and anyway, I had no idea if that was how it even worked. I had to figure that the data was strewn throughout the entire configuration. Frozen in indecision was a good description of how I felt; didn’t even know where to begin.
“We need Walde,” Reed said.
“I was thinking Rose would be a better fit,” I replied.
“No...Walde’s a techno-geek. My guess is she could set up some sort of uplink to the ship.”
“Walde?” I was surprised this was something I’d not known.
“That’s right!” BT exclaimed. “She started in IT before heading to the SEALs.”
“And you know this how?” I asked.
“It’s in her file. Didn’t you read it? Forget it, stupid question. Now the real question is, how do we get her here? Comms are useless.”
“I know,” Kirby said, pointing to the camera located in the corner of the room.
“Is he getting smarter or are we getting dumber?” BT asked.
“Maybe a little of both. Did you drink anything from the tanks?” I asked Kirby.
“I don’t think so,” was his less than comforting response.
“I’m sure I could mouth for Walde to come down here, but I don’t like the idea of anyone being alone all that way. I think the best thing we can do is all go up. We can get Lydia to safety and see if Walde has any ideas, then we’ll come back down if it’s worth it. If she doesn’t think she can do anything, we may have to rely on Rose’s expertise. Fuck it, even if Walde can do something, Rose needs to make this place burn.”
There were no dissenting votes; considering I was offering a reprieve from Hades, it wasn’t a surprise. We moved fast, Lydia was piggybacking on BT. There were no strange sounds, nothing jumped out at us, but I could feel it in my bones that we needed to get out of there. I’m fairly certain a good part of that was self-imposed anxiety, I hoped. The elevator door opened with a ding, and we filed in for the ride upward, again came the unsettling hum. I was practicing breathing exercises the entire time. BT was kind enough to shield me from Reed and Kirby as I held on to the last frayed nerve that was twisting in the breeze. It was no longer a matter of if I succumbed to a broken mind, but when. It was terrifying to know that this was happening, but I didn’t have an inkling of how to put the cracked eggshell of my mentality back together, and that asshole Humpty was no damned help.
If you have a cut, you use a bandage; if it’s bad enough, you get stitches, maybe some antibiotics to prevent an infection. If your appendix decides to act up, you have the thing yanked from your body. But if your mind fractures? What then? A Band-Aid doesn’t seem practical, and no matter what BT says, I don’t think a brain-ectomy is the solution. It would be years before I could slowly withdraw from the razor’s edge I drunkenly stumbled around, but who has that kind of time?
Kirby began to whistle some muzak, I was thankful for the distraction. The rest of the squad was waiting for us when we got topside. I appreciated the fact that Walde, Kirby, Reed and Rose had enough military decorum to not fall into each other’s arms at the reunion. Some head nods, and a look of relief, but nothing more. I was already worried enough about the relationships and the dynamic shift they caused. It had to be squad first before individual members. That was our best chance of survival. Fuck. I knew that lie for what it was. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do, hadn't done, to preserve the life of any one member. But seeing that I was the captain, this was an area of doing as I say, not as I do.
I Introduced Lydia first before giving a quick summary of all we’d seen, even though they’d witnessed the entirety of the event. Lydia and Stenzel buddied up like they’d known each other for years. My sergeant had the little girl smiling and laughing in record time. My heart surged with the sheer joy of it. Nothing purer than that.
“Reed, can you fill Walde in on what we’re thinking?” I asked as I headed to the guard station. I clapped Gary on the shoulder. “How’s our zombie problem?”
“Worse than our ufiti one, if that’s what you’re asking.” He pointed to one of the outside monitors. It looked like a trailer for any of the dozens of zombie movies I’d watched over the years, you know the ones. With either a camera on a crane boom or a video drone, they climb skyward and slowly reveal the thousands of zombies surrounding a structure. Maybe it wasn’t quite the same angle, same effect though.
I was looking for some sort of soft spot within their closed ranks, but nothing short of a tracked vehicle was going to get us out of here. When I left the station I found Walde sitting at the receptionist's desk, tapping away on a keyboard.
“Couple of problems,” she stated, still clacking away without looking up. She paused. “Three problems.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“The first is the easiest. The labs downstairs are a closed intranet; they have no outside links, and no chance to be hacked. An impregnable firewall.”
“That’s the easy one?”
“Easy enough. I’ll have to bring this laptop down into the server room and force my way through. I’m fairly confident in my ability to do that.”
“Fairly confident?”
“Been a few years, sir, since I’ve flexed my hacking muscles, and if they have some radically new safeguard I’ll be outclassed.”
“Fair enough. What’s the second problem?”
“The satellite dish they were using for their internet is going to have to be repositioned.”
“Let me guess, it’s not linked to any servos and can’t be done remotely.”
“Give that captain a gold star!”
“Fuck.” I turned and dipped my head, attempting to work through that problem. As I raised my head to ask the heavens for an answer, they delivered. I grinned. “That might not be as difficult as you think.” I pointed to the ceiling.
“Through the ceiling?” she asked. “Brilliant, sir.”
“Of course, we’re going to have to find some tools down in the depths of Nightmareville, but there has to be a maintenance closet or something, this place is too self-sufficient not to have everything on hand.” I was feeling good about the whole thing until I remembered. “And the third?”
“We’re going to uplink to our roving satellite, so I don’t think we’ll get more than a few minutes of data-worthy transmission link every twenty-four hours. So, depending on how much information those servers house, we could all be eating pudding with a straw by the time it’s done.”
“That’s as good as a failed mission then.”
“Yes sir,” Walde agreed. “There’s another option, and considering we’re not going anywhere anytime soon, it might be viable, but this one also comes with a couple of caveats.”
I tilted back. “Why not? Everyone loves a good caveat, especially when it’s paired with a dry chianti.”
“I got a decent look at some of the servers down there, there were more than a few NGD, 32 terabyte drives. It would take a few days, but there’s no reason to think that all the drives housed there couldn’t be downloaded onto a fraction of them.”
“A few days?” I was thinking of Tommy, Grimm, the Navy boaters, and my family. We couldn’t get in touch with any of them, couldn’t let them know our status, couldn’t find out theirs.
“The next problem is the elevator.”
“Besides it being slower than shit, what about it?”
“When you first went down I heard a strange hum, thought it might be something mechanical. Rose and I pried the doors open to take a look. I’ve heard of what I was looking at, but I’ve never seen it before.”
“And?”
“Enormous magnets, sir. The inside of the elevator is bombarded with electromagnetic energy, built in to prevent data theft." I stared at her. “It will wipe drives or any other sort of data medium.”
“Is there a way to turn it off? Like a light switch?”
“Not without powering down the elevator itself.”
“What about with that laptop? There have to be times when new equipment is coming in; it doesn’t make sense to wipe everything before it gets there.”
She clicked and clacked around before looking up at me and shaking her head. “You’re most likely right, but the access isn’t granted through this computer. Possibly a senior manager, flanked by half a dozen security personnel and a secondary authenticating computer operator have to be here to turn it off while new equipment is brought in. If they’ve gone through all this trouble to keep what they’re doing secret, there is no way some low-level admin is going to have access.”
“Let’s get this straight, so I know we’re on the same page. We stay in this shitty place with monsters outside and inside for a few days while you do the mundane work of compiling and compressing information, and when that’s done we have no way of getting it out of here?”
“Nailed it, sir.”
“Perfect.”
“Although there is a way.”
“Does it suck?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe, sir.”
“Lay it on me.”
“We shut down the power.”
“And?”
“And we climb back up with the drives.”
“In an elevator shaft, on a ladder, in the dark?”
“That’s about the gist of it, sir.”
“You’re fired,” I told her as I headed out to the main area to think. The best alternative I could come up with was letting Rose toss her entire arsenal down the hole to collapse it in on itself, and I may have taken that route if I didn’t believe the building we were in wouldn’t go with it.
“Walde, Reed…” I nearly said Stenzel, but the way Lydia was joined at the woman’s hip I didn’t think it a good idea to separate them.
“Pick me, pick me!” Rose had her hand up in the air.
“There’s no extra credit here,” I told her. “Need you anyway; you’re destroying the server room, and hopefully taking out the ufiti living area as well. Top, you’ll be running the show up here.” He wasn’t thrilled with not being there to ultimately right my wrongs, but did not voice his objection. Got to imagine he was secretly pleased he didn’t need to go back down. “Lydia, can I borrow your keycard?”
She reached her hand in her pocket but was hesitant to hand it over, and I soon knew why.
“This your dad?” I asked.
She nodded. Unrestricted tears flowed from her eyes.
“Oh, honey.” Stenzel got down onto her knees and hugged the girl.
“Thank you, Lydia.” I was looking at it. “Walde, is this thing toast now?”
She took it from my outstretched hand and flipped it over. “Good bet.” She pulled the magnetic reader part away from the picture.
“I thought I hated the UK, but it looks like Nigeria is heading to the top of the charts. Thank you anyway, Lydia,” I said as I handed it back. “Kirby, looks like you’re going to have to come back with us; I’m not reaching into any of those lockers.”
He looked dejected.
“Sir, was there a desk when you exited the elevator?” Walde asked.
“Not immediately, but at the end of the hallway on the catwalk, there was a podium.”
“Like a valet station?” she smiled.
“Ah, that makes sense. You check in your reader when you’re going topside and grab it when you go back in. Kirby, looks like you lucked out, no more funk socks for you to check.”
“Funk socks?” Rose asked. Kirby shook his head at her to signify he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Changed my mind. BT, Kirby, I’d like you to come down for the initial descent, grab some decent chow and bring it back up. Gary, anything moving down there?”
He shook his head and gave a thumbs up from inside the booth.
“All right, let’s get this done.” Headed back down into the belly of the beast, hardly believing that I’d volunteered myself for this part of the mission. Leadership by example had its drawbacks.
“Reed, need your ham hands for this,” Walde said as she stepped behind the podium. There was a heavy, locked metal container.
He turned the handle. “Unlocked.”
“Hmm, first security breach I’ve seen since we got here,” she said.
“Not like any of them were going anywhere,” I replied. “I don’t think they were too worried about state secrets once the zombies came.”
“Hurry your ass up,” BT told me as he grabbed my arm.
“Fast as we can, I promise.”
He grunted. “Kirby, come on, let’s get some food.”
“Mike? Mike, can you hear me!?” I was startled to the point I would have dropped my rifle if it hadn’t been strapped to my body.
“Gary?” I looked up to the camera, where his much too loud voice had emanated from.
“Didn’t realize it, but each camera has a microphone!”
“Listen, brother, I don’t know if you’re excited about the discovery or you have the gain cranked to maximum, but you’re way too loud.”
“How’s this?” he asked in a much more conversational tone.
I gave the camera a thumbs up. “Let us know if you see anything moving.”
I got no response. I kept looking at the camera, waiting to get confirmation. “Oh, sorry, I gave you a thumbs up.” I shook my head and lovingly gave him the finger before walking away. “I’m giving you one as well,” he said to my retreating back.
“Mike,” BT said through my earpiece. I could hear Kirby in the background, grabbing food.
“Yeah.”
“If you’re planning on camping out in the server room, you’re going to want to get extra clothes. There were plenty of them in the locker room, plus plush towels and robes.”
“Good call Top, thanks.”
“Sir, Reed and I are going to head down.”
“Copy that, Walde. Rose, you’re with me. We’re going to make sure we don’t freeze our asses off.”
“Roger that, sir.” Rose had been leaning over the railing, looking at the catwalk and the supports.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her.
“I was thinking I don’t need to destroy this entire cavern. If I bring down a catwalk or two, the ufiti would never be able to climb up. Doesn’t look like it would take too much to do it either.”
“How long would something like that take to set up?”
“Half hour.”
We had plenty of time before the army of apes woke again; my thought was to get the towels and clothes first. We were all going to have to spend some time in there, no matter where the apes were. And there was no sense in not hedging bets, in case Rose’s idea didn’t work out as planned. My bigger fear was that it worked too well and started a cascading effect where all of the floors were ripped free.
“Uh, Rose, I have a question.” I was looking at the center stairwell. “If you blow the anchor points for the walkways, will the stairs break away as well, or will they just stay attached and drag the upper floors down with the rest?”
“Huh. Didn’t take that into consideration.”
“Do you think maybe you could?” I asked her.
“I suppose it’s worth a few seconds of thought.” She walked away to look.
“Reassuring, Rose, very calming.”
“I’ve got this, sir.” A few minutes later, I hear, “We’ve got a problem, Captain.”
“Sure, why not.”
“Structurally it looks as if these stairs are the support for the walkways, so, yep. Likely scenario is I take these out, all the floors come crashing down. It makes destroying this thing easier, but I won’t be able to cut off the ufitis while we’re in here, it’ll have to be done when we leave. We should check out the bottom of this thing.”
I wanted to laugh at the insanity of her words, but she wasn’t kidding. “The bottom? We don’t even know where it is.”
“The lower I place the charges, the more stress on the whole structure.”
There wasn’t a single iota of me that wanted to explore the dungeon levels of this game; hell, I could barely go below decks on our floating home, and I knew how far down that was. “Can’t you just toss some explosives down the hole with a timer?”
“I could, and it’d make a super cool echoing sound, but would be unlikely to blow anything up. These are directional charges, they have to be placed.”
I grumbled about it the entire time we went onto the gym level. I mumbled my displeasure as we stuffed two large black trash bags with towels, robes, and a parka, which made no sense. Who needs a parka in Nigeria? Then it dawned on me, this person probably occasionally worked in the server room, maybe overnight. I’m smart like that. I was still murmuring as we handed off the stuff to Reed.
“How’s it going?” I asked him.
“Don’t know Cap. This is all just a bunch of blinking lights to me.”
